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News from Upper Division

Posted by Clare Abel on October 20, 2011 | 0 Comments

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The Upper Division students and teachers have been very busy during the first six weeks of school. All students in grades 7-11 completed MAP testing in three different areas (reading, language usage, and math). Students will take the MAP testing again in late January and then again in May. Teachers worked very hard to prepare for student-parent-teacher conferences in order to relay to parents what their children have accomplished during these first weeks of the 11-12 school year.


Several of the 7-12 division teachers (Susan Hughes, Kathryn Spooner, Eric Gal, Samantha Stichter, Danielle Fitzgerald, and  Paul Vernon) participated in the Wilson Overview training for three days last week. Wilson Language System is the key component in our reading program at Noble Academy. Some of our 7-12 students are in our Multi Sensory reading classes, so teachers who work with those students found it very beneficial to learn the fundamentals of Wilson reading.

Reading and English - Senior English classes have enjoyed their detective work reading. They have read Agatha Christie and a Sherlock Holmes novel and are now fine-tuning their skills while researching “unexplained” phenomena and preparing to present their findings to their class. Junior English classes have been engaged in some great discussions about the idea of “The American Dream” and are reading literature that show how diverse our country is, and how different the “the dream” is for our different groups of people. The Sophomore class has just completed “The Little Prince” and will be beginning a short story unit of African tales and short stories. Freshmen writing strategies classes are writing five-paragraph response to literature papers after doing a review of single paragraphs and pre-writing diagrams. New freshmen students are learning the University of Kansas Paragraph and Theme writing strategies. In addition, Mr. Gal’s writing strategy class is working on a grammar unit. English 9 has just completed a mythology unit and will begin a short story unit. Seventh and eighth grade reading classes are working on Power Point projects on researching different authors. Their Power Points include information about the author’s childhood and reasons for becoming an author, themes that run throughout his or her stories, and books and short stories written by that particular author. Also in one of the seventh grade reading classes, the students are reading and responding to Maniac Magee.  Eighth grade reading students have just finished a unit about “The Frog Prince” in which students made commercials and wrote papers, all centered around the theme of transformation. Eighth grade English students are writing persuasive essays after filling out a what-why-how chart to encourage more description and detail in their writing. Seventh grade English students are writing different types of paragraphs and learning how to proof read and edit.  

History and Social Studies- Senior Civics students are preparing for their Citizenship Civics test-part of the process to become a Naturalized citizen. US History students are studying the Revolutionary War and World History students are learning about India’s culture and history. The curriculum for seventh and eighth grade social studies this year is focused on Africa, Asia, and Australia. over the past few weeks, students have covered general topics such as culture, population, and technology. Students will spend the next few weeks studying ancient Egypt and working on several projects including building pyramids, creating mummies, and a biography on the lives of different pharaohs. Thursday, all tenth graders will travel to Huntersville with Patty Kiley and Danielle Fitzgerald to the Renaissance Festival where they will experience a variety of 16th century European style art and entertainment including witnessing a jousting tournament.

Spanish- Spanish 3 Honors has been learning about visual and performing arts. Students have begun their first project; they chose either an artist or playwright and are doing research which they will use to create an end product that will inform their fellow students about the person’s contribution to Spanish culture. Spanish II students are using Spanish to discuss their  extra curricular activities. Spanish I students are learning the basic daily living vocabulary and in a few weeks will begin a digital animation project.

Math- Calculus (new course this year) students have just finished a survey chapter on limits, derivatives, and integrals and will begin diving into the details of limits this week.
Geometry students have been studying logic, conditionals, algebraic proofs and segment postulates in proofs. Algebra students have just finished operations with real numbers and are beginning linear operations. Pre-algebra students have been working on integer operations including adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing positive and negative integers. Algebraic Thinking 2 B students have discovered what makes triangles similar and congruent as well as learned about the Pythagorean theorem through word problems. Algebraic Thinking II students have been making Fraction Kits to help visually see what equivalent fractions mean. They are also working on simplifying fractions before they do the four basic operations on fractions

Science- The senior Marine Biology class is preparing for a two-day trip to the beach where they will kayak through a salt marsh to a barrier island. The senior Human Anatomy class is finishing up the study of cells and are completing a torso project of how exercise affects the various systems. Physical Science is in the planning stage of building a vehicle with two different propulsion systems. Students will take the vehicle to competition at Odyssey of the Mind in March 2012. Biology students are studying carbon compounds. Students experimented with indicators by testing food they would commonly eat to see if a particular food contained proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates. Earth Science classes have completed mapping and are into the study of weather and clouds. Seventh and eighth grade classes are studying weather and making tools such as weather vanes and barometers.

Art/DigitalArt- Noble Academy’s first honors art class has been working on developing their portfolio in preparation to applying to art school or art programs in the liberal arts setting. Students are using the guidelines of the AP art portfolio to develop their body of work. The yearbook class has been working hard to learn the new publishing software as well as come up with designs for the cover and interior pages of the book. For the first time, the yearbook will be 100% in color, and the staff is taking pre-orders through the website. Photoshop started the year by reviewing the Elements of Art.  Students used the Elements to create their own set of Artist Trading Cards using a variety of new techniques. Students are now in engaged in learning the Photoshop program. Studio Art students started the year by reviewing the Elements of Art. These students also created a set of Artist Trading Cards based on the Elements of Art. Now they are focusing on the concept of creating an interesting composition by recognizing positive and negative space on the picture plane.

Drama- The high school drama class is working on competition plays and the honors part of the class is studying Method Acting in addition to preparing for competition. Seventh and eighth grade drama is working on a play as well as learning about Greek Theatre and studying Shakespeare’s Midsummer Nights Dream.

Physical Education-  Physical Education classes have just finished fitness testing for all of our Freshman and High Schoolers. Students were measured in many different areas through fitness protocols such as pushups, situps, arm hang, vertical jump, mile run, R.A.S.T. (running anaerobic speed test) sit and reach, body composition and more. Setting their fall benchmarks, our students will now undergo a full year of fitness training including weight lifting, cardiovascular exercise, flexibility, speed and agility training to try to improve upon these bench marks.

Counseling:   In preparation for the PSAT testing which will  be held on October 12th, Mrs. Caligiuri met with students in grades 9 - 11 to discuss  policies, testing directions, and procedures.  Adivsors for grades 9 - 11 continued the discussion during Skill Building.  Transcripts for seniors have been updated and are ready to be sent to colleges as part of the application process and senior advisors reviewed the transcripts with students.  In addition, senior advisors have devoted Skill Building time to the college application process for the last few weeks.  Quite a few applications have already been completed and submitted and at least one acceptance has already been received.


Clare Abel
Upper Division Head

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